Your guide to new Fireside Music Festival at former Madison Square site

As a young rocker, Shawn Patrick got to see then-fresh bands like Soundgarden and Red Hot Chili Peppers play at Tuscaloosa and Atlanta bars to less than 50 people.

“I was blessed to be around at a time when those bands were coming up and I got to see them before they got big,” says Patrick, who played bass in late-80s Alabama underground band Storm Orphans. “Those are the kinds of things that I hold dear as a musician and a music fan.”

Patrick is hoping those attending Fireside Music Festival’s debut in Huntsville this week will experience special moments too – although surrounded by greater numbers of fans. As Fireside music and talent developer, he was tasked with putting together a musical lineup with just a few months’ notice. He came up with one Grammy winner, some local standouts and rising regional talents. Not bad.

Fireside is set for Wednesday through Saturday. It’s the first event to be held at The Camp, an “outdoor leisure destination” and pre-cursor to MidCity, RCP Properties’ mega-bucks development at the former Madison Square Mall site. There’s been local social media buzz curious as to what exactly The Camp and Fireside will be like. Patrick says marquee sound, staging, lighting and video are part of the production.

Although it will take place amid August southern heat, Fireside’s format of spreading 10 acts over four-days should help keep the festival from feeling like a humans-versus-summer endurance test.

For all Huntsville's quality of life advances the last five years or so (numerous craft breweries, improved dining and shopping, more free downtown events), a large-scale music festival remains absent. That void's been present since Big Spring Jam limped to its 2011 finish following an impressive late-90s/early-2000s prime.

"Festivals bring people together of all different backgrounds and music of all different types," Patrick says, "and there’s just something special about what music in an environment like that does and the energy it creates within a city."

Here’s a closer look at Fireside Music Festival’s debut lineup, followed by general event info.

Mike Farris keeps his Grammy Award inside an antique cabinet in the hallway to a guest room in his Nashville home. “I never walk past it, man, and I really should,” Farris says. “You hear people they use (their Grammy) as a doorstop or something. I don’t go for that. This thing it means something. My peers, they chose to give that to me, so I honor it.” Farris took a long and not always scenic road to winning the 2015 Best Roots Gospel Album Grammy Award for his “Shine For All the People” album. Alcohol and drug addictions haunted him for decades. During the ’90s he fronted “almost famous” Nashville rock band Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies and went on to sing for numerous other projects, including Stevie Ray Vaughan’s former backing band Double Trouble, before finding his groove as a solo artist about 10 years ago. Farris’ Fireside set will draw from his solo material including those soulful “Shine For All the People” cuts, tunes planned for his next album and a vintage cover or two.

Billy D. Allen 7 – 8 p.m. Saturday

Billy D. Allen is a Decatur-based R&B dynamo. The vocalist’s influences range from Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Prince to David Bowie, Dolly Parton and Journey.

firekid 5 – 6 p.m. Saturday

Dillon Hodges’ has gone from teenage bluegrass guitar prodigy to major-label signed (and all-lowercase-styled) folk-pop act. A Florence native now in his mid-20s and residing in Nashville, Hodges’ acoustic guitar prowess shines on firekid tracks like “Statues.” Songwriting hooks highlight “Getaway Car” and “Lay By Me.” Firekid's fight-song-in-waiting “Die for Alabama” could be particularly charged if it receives an airing at Fireside.

James LeBlanc Band 3 – 4 p.m. Saturday

Cited this summer by Rolling Stone as one of “10 New Country Artists You Need To Know,” at the ripe range of 46 James LeBlanc is stepping from songwriter to spotlight. The co-author of such hits as Travis Tritt’s “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde” and Jason Aldean’s “Relentless,” LeBlanc’s own LP, “Nature of the Beast,” boasts the everyday-eloquent “I Ain’t Easy to Love,” a rich duet with former “Nashville Star” winner Angela Hacker. LeBlanc is also father of rising Muscle Shoals singer/songwriter Dylan LeBlanc, who’s been playing guitar in his old man’s band of late.